


I'll Be Good (for All of the Times That I Never Could)

by marauders_groupie



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Parents, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Baby Fic!, Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Post-Canon, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 11:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5664475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauders_groupie/pseuds/marauders_groupie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After everything they have been through, they deserve a little happiness. </p>
<p>Or: Bellamy, Clarke and their daughter in a series of moments taking place after season 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Be Good (for All of the Times That I Never Could)

**Author's Note:**

> This one is for [my dearest Nat](http://archiveofourown.org/users/alltheworldsinmyhead) who needed some canon-verse domestic baby fluff because that trailer was the worst, and I'm always happy to help. 
> 
> The title is from Jaymes Young - I'll Be Good and I'll never be able to hear that song again without thinking of Bellamy Blake. And this fic, now. 
> 
> Enjoy!

"It's like the Road Runner," Clarke says, her eyes widening as she pokes her stomach.

Their kid is no bigger than a peach right now but it's still racing below her navel, left and right. Bellamy always laughs when the baby gets up to its usual antics but he's as fascinated as Clarke.

She likes to poke it lightly, though.

"The Road Runner?" he frowns, placing a hand on the little bulge and chuckling when it scoots over to the other side.

Clarke rolls her eyes, throwing her head back at the pillows as Bellamy plays with their baby. They've got a game. The baby avoids his hand and that's the gist of it.

"Yeah, like the cartoon?" When he's still confused, she snorts fondly. "There's a coyote and he's trying to kill a roadrunner but the bird is - okay, you know what? Never mind."

"No, no," he protests, unable to stop the mirth seeping into his voice. Their kid's got a personality and it's not even three months old. It's his and Clarke's. He's happier than he ever thought he'd be. "I want to know about this roadrunner of yours. And the coyote. Why is he failing? Is he inept?"

"No one actually _wants_ him to kill the bird, Bell!"

A second passes before he feels a smile tugging on his mouth and Clarke realizes what she said.

"You called me Bell," he says, his chest expanding to allow for more happiness. It's almost a physical feeling at this point.

(He can't say that he doesn't like it.)

"Good thing we didn't get married," she shoots back. "I can't divorce you."

"Come on, Princess, don't be like that. You _can_ call me Bell, I'm your baby's daddy."

He figures that he's absolutely had it coming when she lunges at him and begins a tickle war that doesn't end until Raven pounds on the wall connecting their cabin to hers, threatening to exile them unless they keep it quiet.

The baby shifts again a little later and Clarke wrinkles her nose, proudly announcing, "The baby thinks you're a dork, too."

 

*

 

The baby is late and Clarke is at her wit's end. She's pacing around the room, huffing and panting, until Raven finally drops her wrench and says,

"I don't know what the hell you were expecting, Griffin. It's your kid, of course it's not gonna play by the rules."

To that, Clarke whirls around to face Bellamy, a sizeable feat going by the fact that she's tired and whale-ish (her words, not Bellamy’s – to him, she’ll always be the best thing in the world), and chirps, "Bellamy, honey?"

Bellamy is fond and annoyed and amused and absolutely in love.

"Yes, _cookie_?"

"You’re a nerd – do you know if there was ever a law that pardoned pregnant women of committing crimes against assholes because they were pissed off?”

"It sounds vaguely familiar," Bellamy replies, keeping a safe distance. "If not, we'll draft one. Your mom will approve."

Raven swallows hard.

 

*

 

Clarke goes into labor and Bellamy doesn't even know it until he returns from a hunting trip and Jasper runs up to him, wide eyed and panicked with a shrill voice.

"Bellamy - it's Clarke - a baby! A baby!"

Even though he’s been preparing himself for this, Bellamy's legs cut off and he stumbles over to medical in a daze.

When he tries to come in, Jackson, Abby's assistant doctor, tries to stop him and Bellamy knows he's been through a lot without blowing his fuse but that's _Clarke_ in there and -

"Out of my way, Jackson," he sneers, peeking over the man's shoulders to try and see what's going on. There are doors Raven made out of tarp and he can't see shit.

"Bellamy, I'm sorry, we can't let you in. Clarke is doing great, Raven and Abby are with her."

" _I'm_ not," Bellamy shoots back, his heart beating a tattoo on his ribs because it's happening, it's happening. "I don't give a shit, Jackson. You either let me in or I-"

It is then that Abby appears, her skin shiny with sweat and green scrubs wherever he can look. He hates the scrubs. They remind him of the day when Clarke got the scar sprawling across her stomach, connecting the bottom of her ribcage to her left hip. They remind him of how alone she looked until he came in.

They’ve been through hell and back. But they did it together.

"What's going on?" she demands. "Bellamy, Clarke is okay, you can see her later."

Then he hears Clarke screaming.

"Listen to me very carefully, Chancellor,” Bellamy drawls, his fingernails digging into his palms as he counts down the imaginary time to blowing up and burning everything to the ground – just to get to Clarke. “I. Don't. Give. A. Shit. That's _my_ Clarke in there and she is not going through this without me!"

Abby takes a step back, as if scorched, and there’s a moment of stunned silence between them until she quickly nods to herself. She shoves a pair of scrubs at him and, tears welling in her eyes, croaks out, “Call me Abby.”

 

Clarke looks like he’s the best, brightest thing she’s ever seen and grabs onto his hand for dear life. Her hair’s gone frizzy, her skin is clammy with sweat and Raven is nearly hyperventilating next to her.

But she smiles when she sees Bellamy and he presses a kiss to the top of her head, squeezing her hand. “You can do this, Princess.”

Clarke scoffs. “Of course I can. I need to see our Road Runner as soon as possible.” And with a slight pout, she adds, “I’ve missed it for so long.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy smiles in response, pecking her cheek and moving out of the way when she moves to swat at him. “Me, too.”

 

The baby is a girl. She’s got ten fingers, ten toes, two blue eyes and she’s soft and perfect and –

“Your kid’s a screamer,” Raven breathes out and it takes them a full minute to appreciate the joke and laugh out loud. The mechanic’s features soften then and she offers a finger to their baby, the latter trying to chew on it almost instantly. “Hi, Road Runner. I’m your Aunt Raven. You seem pretty cool, we’ll get along.”

They should probably give their baby a name but Bellamy can’t even think straight for long enough to come up with a coherent suggestion. Everything is happening, nothing is happening, the world is spinning on its axis and the whole planet is still.

There is Clarke, tired but radiant with something that comes with knowing that you’ve done horrible things but this one thing right here, it’s a good one.

And it’s worth it. Bellamy knows that every single step they took, no matter how gruesome or frightening, it’s worth it if it took them to their baby girl in Clarke’s arms, to this peace, to this happiness.

To their family.

At the end of the day, they’re a family. Abby coos at the baby, Clarke is in tears, Bellamy is in tears – everyone is crying and Road Runner is just looking at them like she’s wondering who the hell these people are and why the fuckity fuck are they crying around her.

“We’re your family, Road Runner,” Bellamy tells her, watches the soft fuzz of brown hair on her head bounce as she wiggles in his arms. “And we love you so, so much.”

“We’re gonna give her the world, Bellamy, won’t we?” Clarke asks him and he nods. Simple as that. There have been two people he would die for so far. Now there is a third, and she comes first.

He thought he would die for a lot of things. But for his daughter, he would live, too.

 

*

 

They lie on their bed at night, Road Runner between them, and try to come up with a name. Her skin is dark like Bellamy’s, her eyes are Clarke’s and her hair is Bellamy’s, too.

“But she’s stubborn like me,” Clarke points out, blowing a raspberry as if that’s a noticeable achievement – your kid taking after you in stubbornness.

It’s not like it isn’t true. She’s five days old and she’s already got everyone wrapped around her finger. They can expect great things from her.

“Yeah, that she is. Not that she’s not perfect,” Bellamy says, his voice going quieter as he pecks their baby’s pudgy little cheek. “Because she is. Oh, Road Runner, you are. And you are so, so loved.”

Clarke knows how much it means to him that they get to do this – have a kid, raise it under a blue sky and with wind rustling the trees. Everything that they didn’t have in the metal confine that was the Ark.

She doesn’t miss it, despite everything that she’s been through since they landed. No, Clarke likes the freedom, the air, the opportunity to go through hell and back with Bellamy and emerge with good things she’d never even dared to expect.

“We could name her Aurora,” she offers at last, watching her partner/boyfriend/husband/lover – her _everything_ play with their daughter. She coos and giggles, emits these cute little sounds and Clarke wonders how the hell they got from a war to this, pajamas, messy hair and their baby.

Bellamy shoots down the suggestion without even raising his head. He’s tickling the baby and Clarke is so, so happy. “Nah, she needs her own name, without tragedies that come with it.” Then he looks up, eyes softening as he looks at Clarke. “But I love you for offering.”

The thing about them, they were a lot of things in their past. Leaders, rebels, warriors, war criminals, dissidents, traitors. They were a lot of things, carrying their rifles and their armor every day and night, but around each other –

Well, around Bellamy, Clarke could be soft. Soft without yielding her strength. She could feel at home. At home on this planet that was trying to kill her. At home with herself, knowing that she’s done great and terrible things but there was still someone who offered his forgiveness like it was no weight at all.

Someone who carried the burden with her.

Someone who, despite everything she’s done, loved her and still loves her so much that it is impossible to believe it. She wakes up every morning with Bellamy curled around her but she still smiles because he stayed.

“Evangeline,” he finally says, smiling crookedly at Clarke. “Unless you want her to stay Road Runner.”

“Evangeline,” Clarke tries it out. “Evie. Yeah, okay.”

“Welcome to Earth, Evie,” Bellamy kisses the tip of her little nose, finding Clarke’s hand on the covers. “I think you’ll do great here.”

Clarke beams at him and his heart flips in his chest, like it always does. Here is a girl whom he lost and found across the years but sometimes he thinks that even if they were light years apart, they'd still find their way home.

 

*

 

Their life after that becomes the picture of domesticity, so much that even Octavia laughs when she sees them in their little makeshift kitchen one day.

There’s a stove, an improvised one, a kitchen table, and they currently have Evie sprawled in both of their laps, bits of soup all over the place.

Bellamy knows that everyone says having kids is tough; especially when you’re a young parent, but honestly, he doesn’t think anything is tough anymore. Evangeline is here, Clarke is here, and even Octavia strides in with her sword strapped to her back.

“Bell, we need you in – “she starts, stopping herself as soon as she sees Clarke imitating an airplane and trying to feed Evangeline who should start trying out solid food at this point. Not that she wants to. “Have you two finally lost it?”

“We’re feeding Evie,” Bellamy calmly explains, taking the spoon from Clarke and tricking Evangeline into swallowing bits of panther meat Abby cleared as safe. Their daughter isn’t very pleased with the sudden turn of events, going from a giggling baby who’s happy her parents are at their wit’s end to a wailing, drooling one.

Octavia rolls her eyes, drops her sword and approaches Evie, cooing, “Hi, Eves. It’s Aunt O. You doing okay with these two?” When she tickles Evie’s stomach, the latter giggles happily, tears long forgotten. “Let me tell you what. I’ll take you out if you eat this, okay?”

Bellamy hands her the spoon and Octavia goes through at least ten silly expressions as Evangeline munches on the same food she hadn’t even wanted to try.

When she’s eaten it all, Octavia turns to the two of them with a victorious smile on her face, her niece napping with her head in the crook of Octavia’s arm.

“See? Reward system. It works.”

 

When they’re not trying to feed their daughter, Bellamy and Clarke find themselves just enjoying it. Two years earlier, it would have seemed impossible – to be able to sleep in (because everyone finally decided to give them a break), wake up with messed up hair and easy smiles.

These days, reasons to smile are easy to come by.

“We should probably get up,” Clarke whispers, tracing imaginary patterns on Bellamy’s chest, and making no move to actually do what she proposed.

Bellamy watches her – how her dark circles aren’t there anymore. Instead, there is a spark in her eyes, the one he’d last seen before Mount Weather, before she had to do what no eighteen year-old ever should.

There is a spark in her eyes and he presses a kiss to her forehead, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her on top of him. Clarke stifles her laugh in the juncture between his shoulder and his neck, but the whole place vibrates with her energy, with their energy, with Evie’s energy.

“Get up, huh?” he teases, trying to unwind the knot in her hair. “You sure about that, Princess?”

Clarke shakes her head. “Absolutely not. Let’s stay in forever. Fuck the camp, right?”

“Fuck the camp,” he confirms, leaning up to kiss her. “It’s just the three of us against the world.

 

*

 

Clarke goes to work after Evie turns one, even though she tried to help out before. Her mother wouldn’t hear of it and it wasn’t like anyone needed her. The worst cases in medical they had these days were fevers caused by a flu or a cold, easily cured by a mixture of available plants.

It’s both odd and not really to be back at work, away from Bellamy and Evangeline. Their daughter is doing great and maybe Clarke is a little biased, but she’s pretty sure the kid is a genius. For family-unrelated reasons.

Just as she’s done inspecting Miller’s wound, the one he shyly admits to having because he tried to pluck some flowers Monty likes, Bellamy and Evie stumble into the medical.

Her first thought is – something happened. It’s hard not to think of the worst when she’s been conditioned to think of only the bad things happening. Even though they’ve had it good for quite some time, it seems like a dream.

It seems like she’s going to wake up one day and realize that the bed next to her is cold and there never was Bellamy waking her up with kisses or Evie gurgling happily.

When Bellamy says, “Let’s see what Mommy is up to”, Clarke lets out a sigh of relief. They’re both alright, with Evie strapped to Bellamy’s chest. He never lets go of her.

Clarke shoots him a look of fond exasperation, reaching for Evie and kissing her chubby cheek when Bellamy places her in Clarke’s lap. “Mommy is up to nothing. Uncle Nate, on the other hand -” she trails off, staring at Miller pointedly.

She’s not even surprised when Bellamy starts teasing him.

“Ooh, did you get hurt because of Monty again?”

“Again?” Clarke asks as Evie pulls on one of her curls. “What do you mean, _again_?”

“Miller is a love-struck puppy,” Bellamy says proudly, tapping his best friend on the shoulder as the latter proceeds to fluster. “A _clumsy_ love-struck puppy.”

“Like you were any better!” Miller shoots back as Clarke observes the exchange, thankful for moments like these. “Clarke this, Clarke that, would Clarke love it if I killed a panther for her? A two-headed deer? Fuck Collins, seriously,” Miller imitates Bellamy’s voice, rolling his eyes. “I love Clarke, I wanna have Clarke’s babies, did you see Clarke today? Clarke is awesome!”

“Babe,” Clarke grins, “babe, you were so in love with me. It’s embarrassing.”

Bellamy looks very unimpressed when he speaks, “We have a kid together, Clarke.”

Clarke shrugs, settling Evie on her hip. “Still. It’s a little embarrassing. Isn’t it, Evie? Your dad is such a sap.”

But she loves that sap.

 

*

 

Some days it feels like Bellamy's heart is out of his chest.

His heart, his soul - those were never the things he thought about in the middle of the battle. Ponderings about those always came afterwards, when the ground went silent and everyone's eyes became dark with the monstrosities they have witnessed.

Well, his heart, if he ever had one - it was always too heavy for his chest. He had these two hands, a sharp tongue and a brain that could devise military tactics, but his heart was always the one which led him to triumph or defeat, sometimes both in one.

If you ask Clarke, she'll tell you that Bellamy's heart was always a swollen thing, too big for his body, as high as the stars they had called their home.

She saw him with Octavia, torn apart between stopping the girl with pure life coursing through her veins and letting her roam free, uncontained.

(They had been contained for a very, very long time.)

Clarke saw Bellamy's wide, beseeching eyes as his sister left, kept leaving, and she knew that his heart was right there, on the sleeve of her Grounder jacket, somewhere in the tattoo of butterflies she had made.

Then she saw him when he told her that she was his people, when Pike called for war - another one, their life was stretched thin between endless battlefields, and she saw the bloody, beaten thing still ticking on his palm.

"I'm yours, if you want me," he told her, raw pain and love and both, _both_ , on his face like he couldn't keep hiding it anymore.

And Clarke hadn't thought that she had any heart to spare but she found some. Somewhere below the memories of Mount Weather, Jasper clutching Maya to his chest, below Lexa telling her that they are leaders and it means that they have to send people to die for them.

Underneath all that pain, she found some love.

"Bellamy," she smiled, burdened and understood at the same time, "I never wanted anything else."

What she wanted to say was, _come to me with your heart on your palm. Come to me because I don't know how do you keep fighting when the world loves you on your knees and not with your head held high._

_Come to me, because I think even my soul smells of death but with you, I want to believe that I can be better._

"I need you," she whispered finally, a bonfire between them and raucous laughter around them. It seemed quiet in her head, in her heart.

She said she needed him and somehow, it sounded like a confession and an apology. The two of them were always strong, always important. The Grounders thanked Bellamy for helping free their people and they bowed their heads in respect when Clarke passed them. They had the greatness thrust upon them, but in the end, when it came to things that mattered – it wasn’t loud or painful or Earth-shattering. The love they had for each other wasn’t a declaration.

It was just coming home at the end of the day, when the world has beaten you half to death, and springing alive at the sight of someone who loved you. It was very quiet, very still, even though the world was tipping on its axis.

And now, this man's heart is still outside his body and it's in their daughter.

In Evie's fluffy curls, tiny freckles below her eyes, in her giggles, in the glint in her eye that reminds Clarke ferociously of both her father and her aunt.

His heart is in Evie and Clarke's heart is in their daughter, too. She was so, so afraid for so long but for Evie, she'd go through hell she knows by her scraped knees now - having climbed up once or twice already - and she'd laugh as the fire burns her skin because, God, it's worth it.

Seeing Bellamy with their daughter is worth all the pain, all the scars, all the memories that will never fade.

"I love you," she tells Evie and watches her daughter smile. "I love you, Evie. I want the world to be good, just for you."

_Clarke_ wants to be good, just for Evie.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, that's it! I hope you liked it and I hope I helped, at least a little bit. If I did, kudos and comments are a great way of letting me know so please be lovely and make my day. :D
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading! 
> 
> p.s. [tumblr is where i'm at](http://marauders-groupie.tumblr.com).


End file.
